


Maybe These Stars Are Our Prison Cells

by beware_phangirl (dantiloquent)



Series: One Shots [6]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Existential Angst, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, M/M, existential and depressing thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-01
Updated: 2015-03-01
Packaged: 2018-03-15 21:10:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3462197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dantiloquent/pseuds/beware_phangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, maybe, they aren’t.<br/>Phil Lester is sitting on the curb instead of dancing at the party, with too many bad memories and a stranger who’s good at pretending he isn’t as confused as he is.<br/>“It’s stupid. They’re all coming to meet people as if soulmates can be found amongst cigarette smoke and drugs. As if soulmates can be found at all.”<br/>warnings: some deep topics touched upon, but it’s all pretty mild. so, like, existential and depressing thoughts. mention of death, blood and drugs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Maybe These Stars Are Our Prison Cells

**Author's Note:**

> based off [this](http://inkskinned.tumblr.com/post/107801222809/i-think-some-people-stop-looking-at-the-stars) post  
> AN: i am worried about this, this could either be The Worst or One of The Best things i’ve written so. basically its hard to capture the essence of that amazing post and i know it might contradict itself but i think that’s the point (it’ll become clear once you’ve read it).  
> you can also read and reblog on tumblr: http://pianoboyhowell.co.vu/post/112441972136/maybe-these-stars-are-our-prison-cells

Phil wonders if the temperature of ten degrees will eventually make his fingers go a suffocated blue, if it will eventually make all feeling flee from his skin. He wonders, if he sits long enough on the pavement, feet tucked onto the road and hands clasped on his knees, if he’ll see sunlight scrape away the shadow.  
He wonders if he should stop looking at the stars.  
He’s been staring upwards for what could be hours, leaving the party - still unraveling at a malicious speed behind him - for the snug clutch of night and cosmology. Each weak pinprick of light is stuck in his corneas, and the moon is overly and unfairly bright compared to the constellations of stars. It’s so vast and creates so much, from his perspective. He is overly conscious of how small he is right now, how small he always has been but failed to realise for too long. Thousands of cities lie in the sky’s wake, thousands of cities which have been dangled just out of his reach. He’s stuck on a lawn in a city he has a burning temptation to leave, with friends and strangers who have probably seen no more than he has, have lived no more than he has, when it comes down to it. They say he has freedom, that we all have freedom to do whatever, but he knows that isn’t true. Because money exists, and if he truly could do anything he would be swimming over the corals in Australia, or listening to notes dripping with bitter hope in a crowded concert hall, but he can’t - so he’s stuck with successes denounced to meaningless shreds.  
There’s smoke twisting round him, wafting over from some sort of drug someone is using to get wasted on the front lawn. Ugly music blasts from speakers, and he has a useless degree so if he tried hard enough he could probably guess the key and the chord progression and whether they tried at all when writing the melody, but he can’t be bothered and that degree was a waste of time, anyway. And it’s funny because chasing your dreams is pointless after all.  
Phil can remember the name of the guy who invited him to this, but he can’t remember why he did, because they haven’t had a proper conversation for two years, and they’ve only known each other for just a while longer. But he came - he’s still trying to figure out why - and then left within ten minutes of the offbeat dancing and crashing of strangled cheers entering his skull. It was long enough for his loneliness amongst couples and strangers to become apparent, and he should be used to it by now but other people’s blind lust and haste is too much for him and -  
And he should have called her back.  
He’s not drunk and he’s not high, but he’s perched on the edge of a city road, and he reminds himself that it’s because he won’t lie to himself, not again.  
Because there were signs, so many amongst the sheets and the bouquets of wild flowers, but he lied and cheated himself until it was thrust in his face. He promised himself through his tears that it wouldn’t happen again, so when her call ID flashed in neon on his phone he ignored her. But now he reckons he’d rather risk pain with her than suffer loneliness - strengthened by how far away Earth is from Venus - without her.  
He remembers something she said once, when they had stopped at the top of a hill and sat on his beat up car bonnet, staring at the soporific dazzles of streetlights and the stars which had managed to combat the city lights.  
“I think,” she had begun, her legs swinging under the curve of the car and the wind picking up her words and throwing them away. Venus reappears from behind a tangle of cloud. “I think the closest we can ever get to the stars is holding onto people who have been lost in them.” She turned to face him, then, her hair wiping round moonlit countenance and a faint smile carving her lips; and he pulled her closer because she was his link to the stars above them, and he doesn’t know why she had said it at all because you say things like that when you’re talking about someone - him - but he had never been lost amongst what were really burning bundles of gas, not properly. Not until After.  
And maybe that’s why gravity is loosening its grip on him and maybe that’s why he feels so devoid when he looks up, because he’s lost in the stars and trying to be the one he can hold onto, to be his closest opportunity to knowing the stars. But that’s impossible, will always be no matter how long he stays lost or how far he strays, because he can’t hold onto himself - so he’s drifting away from everything.  
He sighs, yearning for her because she understood it all; she would whisper her ideas on how fucked up fate was, and he would laugh, and that one sentence on that one night may have been the proof he needed that she was the only other person who got it. Before she left, that is - _that_ was the proof he needed that he wasn’t her celestial counterpart.  
His thoughts are too clamorous for the night, so he abandons all profound thinking. Instead, he meekly follows his mind down each clumsy path, barely settling before moving on to the next random thought. Everything becomes looser because of it, and he stares up at the full moon as he pulls apart a tissue he found in his pocket, fingers fumbling to tear uneven strips.  
“Seen any signs of werewolves yet?” He’s so distant that the voice barely makes him jump, despite him not realising they were coming. A shadow has fallen over him.  
“Who says I’m not the werewolf?” he asks, turning with a sly expression of expectation.  
“I suppose there is something monstrous about you,” the stranger muses, “But, then, that may be because you’re human.” The guy comes into focus, and Phil registers the reflection of the streetlight in his golden eyes and an easy smirk lying on his lips. His whole face nests in shadow. He’s looming above Phil with some kind of apathetic confidence, as if he lost everything a while ago and came to know everything about the universe in the process. Everything is worn down around the ages with undesired decisions about the world, from the stressed fabric of his jeans to the collapses of his hair and how his hands sit in his pockets. But behind his apparent interest in Phil and pride at what he has just said, he’s concocted from fatigue and cracks in his façade reveal the dust left on unused piano keys.  
“I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do about that,” Phil utters.  
“I know.”  
He exhales, lowering himself down onto the curb beside Phil. He bends his legs and drapes his arms over them, and his side profile makes him so much more impalpable, when he’s not looking at Phil he could easily be made from scratchy paint brush strokes.  
“Apparently,” Phil says delicately, and he knows he’s said too many letters to stop now, “the moon is four times smaller than Earth.”  
“So Earth is four times the size and just as useless, then.” Phil smiles at the sound of his thoughts being said aloud in a foreign tongue. The guy speaks English but he may as well be speaking a different language, with how each letter rolls off his tongue in a fashion so different to what Phil’s heard before, and it’s as if each letter is important.  
“Maybe we shouldn’t think about that, then,” Phil says.  
“No. Maybe we shouldn’t.” He pauses. “But we also shouldn’t be sitting on the edge of a road at midnight, but a lot is out of my control these days.” Another pause, and all Phil can think about is stars and air pressure and someone who understands.  
“Who are you?” he asks wondrously.  
“Dan Howell.” He says his surname as if it means something, smiling as he does so. “And you?”  
“Phil. Phil Lester, if that helps at all.” Dan hums in laughter.  
“So, Phil, what are you doing out here, and not in there?” Dan gestures behind him with a flick of his head, eyes fixed firmly on Phil. And Phil can’t help but notice how, now, his backdrop is the stars.  
“It’s stupid. They’re all coming to meet people as if soulmates can be found amongst cigarette smoke and drugs. As if soulmates can be found at all.”  
“Do you think they can?”  
“All evidence shown to me has suggested otherwise,” he says bitterly, spitting out words and memories as if that can rid him of them.  
“Did you lose someone?” Dan guesses it in one - too soon for him to be guessing, in fact, and when Phil studies him it does seem like he is used to the subject. He hesitates before nodding.  
“Yeah. Well, more she got rid of me,” he laughs coldly, the pebble he throws skittering along the concrete amongst the lull of city streets. “After months of proving we were perfect, it turns out I wasn’t for her, after all. And when two stars collide they explode, and the brightest stars are the ones which die first. You can be so sure you’re made for each other, but something will get in the way. Money, life, death. Someone else. I don’t think something as brilliant as soulmates could exist in a world like this.”  
“It would seem like nothing brilliant is allowed to exist in this world,” Dan whispers solemnly. Each consonant sticks on his lips, the words lie in the air for a few heartbeats before Dan turns his gaze up to Phil. His eyes are wide and round and show nothing but questions.  
“Have you lost someone, too?” Phil asks, and feels pathetic as soon as he has. He’s still throwing rocks across the road.  
“Kind of. Not in the same way you have. It was a long time ago, I was still young.”  
Phil feels like he’s been drenched with cold water. “I’m sorry.”  
“Don’t be. It’s like you said: there isn’t much you can do about it.”  
They collapse into a mutual silence, and Phil finds himself thinking about her again and wondering if Dan can hear his thoughts. It comes back naturally, in all its heart-wrenching glory. Seeing her with him, with words that wouldn’t come out as he ran. Running out the room. Crying all the way to the bus stop, phone vibrating in his pocket. He had answered it, eventually.  
“What?” he choked out. It was agreed that they would meet above the city again, and she was already leaning against her car by the time he got there. Midnight. She had said that your Love is not your Only Love, and that she still loved him - or something along those lines, he couldn’t be sure, because Phil was more focused on the coarse red in the beds of his fingernails. She still wanted him, wanted them, together - but he knew by then that soul mates didn’t exist. And then he’s thinking about how he can’t count the number of digits of the distance between the Earth and the moon on one hand, and wondering how far away she is right now.  
“You’re thinking about them. You shouldn’t. Not like this,” Dan speaks suddenly.  
“I can’t,” Phil whispers. “It’s like I’m trapped.”  
“I know. But you can stop thinking about them, stop thinking about everything. It will help you sleep easy at night. Learn to love the walls of your prison cell. Break out of them.”  
“But-”  
“Please, Phil. Can you try to do that, for me?” Dan implores, twisting and resting his hands atop Phil’s while boring his gaze into Phil’s in bursts of wired copper and tumbling abysses. He’s biting his lip and a small pool of blood twinkles like larva in the moonlight. Phil’s lips part and a breath catches in his throat, gaze hanging onto Dan’s as long as he can before letting it fall.  
“You don’t even know me. I don’t know you.”  
“Maybe, but you need to do this. If someone’s toxic, you get rid of them. If there’s no way of getting someone back, you let go. Fill your life with polaroids of everyone but them.”  
“How do you know it will work?” Phil enquires, not regretting how sharp it comes out because it’s self defense and fear tangled together.  
“Because it’s what I’ve spent my whole life trying to do.” Dan sighs.  
“I’m still sorry.”  
“You still can’t do anything about it. And that’s okay. I’m okay.”  
Phil keeps looking at Dan, searching for something new, as if he believes in epiphanies and racing soundtracks as the main characters properly see each other for the first time. He doesn’t, and Dan stays the same, with mussed clothes and tapping feet and his dimple disappearing into his cheek.  
“What do you do with your life?” he asks quietly. “Who are you, really?”  
“Why?”  
“Because…I can’t understand you,” he admits, tilting his head to the side in enthralled confusion.  
“I hold onto people as long as I can, because I learnt that you don’t know that things can fall apart until they do and knowing that means never wanting to let a good thing go ever again. And I think people call me a dreamer because of that. I am sometimes hopeful, too hopeful; I would call them back, and when I look at the stars I don’t get bashed back into a self-deprecating reality. I stare at the stars until my lips turn blue and beyond, until everything collapses around me, until I know that I’m going to die, and I embrace that. I know that you know that we are just blinks the stars won’t notice, but I am different from others in the fact that this does not terrify me. Instead, I think it focuses me. We are given the stars’ warmth and light, and we have so little time to take it in and pay them back - have you ever thought about that? We have been granted this time and this world, and I like to fill that with good things and good people and being a good person. I am not a star, and maybe I don’t need to even get close to being one. I’m not meant to be a star. I am unhappy and clueless about a lot of things. But I can bring people together. Like nuclear reactions. I can take the chance, because I have no time not to. I can make sure that I do all I can so I don’t have to let go. I can call them back. You should call them - was it a her?” Phil nods. “You should call her back.”  
Words fill Phil’s head and he’s thinking about life and troubles and conflicting goals and trying. It feels a bit like he’s just woken up when it’s still the middle of the night, all words robbed from him except Dan’s.  
“Was that scripted?” Phil asks eventually, incredulously, and Dan laughs, warm and inviting.  
“No. Though it may as well be.”  
“Does your throat hurt now?” Phil smiles.  
“Yeah, now you mention it.”  
“I still don’t know if I understand you.” Dan laughs again, and shuffles closer, and it’s only as their shoulders touch that Phil is reminded that he is real and not another shadow.  
Phil’s eyes skim over Cassiopeia and maybe he doesn’t feel as empty this time, because even though he doesn’t have the link he had craved for, he is still connected. And Dan’s theory makes sense, but he is still tired and blurred. But they both know that it’s because Dan is still trying, trying to act on it and trying to accept it. The knowledge is still there, and they are still just small faults in a frequency.  
“Things aren’t always good. They may be easy and you may think you want to not lose them…”  
“It takes just as much courage to drop the bad things,” Dan finishes - it wasn’t what Phil was going to say, but it fits and makes more sense. An answer.  
“So what if I don’t want to call her back?” And the question is not a beg, or a plea, or a whine; it is more a curious statement.  
He hasn’t looked away from Dan for a while.  
“You can do anything,” Dan says. And it’s said with a wry, smile twisted with irony and mocking, but there is some solacing honesty slashed through his irises.  
And then they’re kissing under starlight given to them, bringing their bodies closer together and it shouldn’t be a surprise that they don’t explode. And Phil’s wondering if he tastes like barren ash because he’s always wondered what it would be like if everything went up in flames and he went with it, and Dan’s fingers are sparks from matches on his waist.  
“This doesn’t make sense. Soul mates don’t exist and I don’t know how old you are; you don’t know my favourite colour,” Phil says after pulling away.  
“I know.”  
“Soul mates don’t exist, Dan.”  
“I know, and they don’t have to. Why can’t we decide who we love, and who says that _this_ is love? This is now, and when everything falls apart it makes you want to never let go of a good thing ever again. This may not be the future, but this is a good thing.”  
Dan Howell is still confusing, no matter how many profound sentences he conjures up. He is still contradiction and fatigue and too much knowledge, Phil decides, but he is also sense and he is stunning under moonlight. His eyes are sincere and if he can believe it, maybe Phil can, too.  
Phil nods his head slightly, understanding. “We have been granted this time, and this world…”  
“And we should take the chance, because we have no time not to.”

**Author's Note:**

> so YEAH i know dan's ideas conflict a little but i think i sorted that out (yes some of it was my fault) but i think it is also partly the character so yea. let me know, i suppose!


End file.
